Ask a friend to name a soft drink brand and they’ll probably say Coca-Cola or Pepsi before you’ve finished the question. Now ask them to name a local coffee chain. You’ll likely get a pause, and maybe no answer at all until you give them a hint.
That difference in how quickly and easily a brand comes to mind is exactly what recall metrics measure. Let’s work through the three main ones: top-of-mind recall, unaided recall and aided recall.
To keep things concrete, imagine Daily Grind, a coffee chain with 30 stores across one region. It competes with Starbucks and a couple of other local chains, and its marketing manager, Priya, wants to know how well people actually remember the brand. We’ll follow her through the whole process.
What Are Recall Metrics?
Recall metrics are brand awareness measures used in marketing research. They tell us how strongly a brand sits in a consumer’s memory, and whether that memory needs a nudge or comes out on its own.
The three versions sound similar, and people do sometimes use the terms loosely. But they measure slightly different things, so it’s worth getting them straight. For a wider look at the topic, see our guide to brand awareness metrics.
The Three Recall Metrics
Unaided Recall
Unaided recall (also called spontaneous recall) uses an open question with no prompting at all. Priya’s survey might ask, “Which coffee shop brands can you think of?” There’s no list and no logo. People have to pull brand names out of memory on their own.
If Daily Grind shows up in those answers, the brand has earned a real place in that person’s head. That’s why unaided recall is usually treated as a harder test than simply recognizing a name.
Top-of-Mind Recall
Top-of-mind recall is a special case of unaided recall. When we ask that open question, most people list more than one brand. Whichever brand they say first is their top-of-mind brand.
So if a shopper says “Starbucks, then Daily Grind, then Gloria Jean’s,” Starbucks gets the top-of-mind credit, and all three get unaided recall credit. Every top-of-mind brand is also an unaided recall brand, but not the other way around.
Why does being first matter? Because the first brand that pops into someone’s head has an edge at the moment they decide where to buy their morning coffee.
Aided Recall
Aided recall (also called prompted awareness, and closely linked to brand recognition) gives people a cue. Priya might show a list of coffee brands or a set of logos and ask, “Which of these have you heard of?”
Because the brand is right there in front of them, aided scores are almost always higher than unaided scores for the same brand. Recognizing a name when you see it is a much lower bar than remembering it unprompted.
How Do the Three Metrics Fit Together?
We can think of the three metrics as a ladder, from weakest to strongest:
- Aided recall: the person recognizes Daily Grind once prompted.
- Unaided recall: the person can name Daily Grind with no prompting.
- Top-of-mind recall: the person names Daily Grind first, ahead of every competitor.
A big, established brand will often score well on all three rungs. A newer or smaller brand might only register on aided recall. Show people the logo and they’ll say “oh yes, I’ve seen that one,” but they’d never have thought of it on their own.
Where would you guess Daily Grind sits? Let’s look at Priya’s numbers.
Reading the Results
Say Priya’s survey comes back looking like this:
- Starbucks is top-of-mind for 45% of people and appears in unaided recall for 78%.
- Daily Grind is top-of-mind for just 6%, appears in unaided recall for 40%, and reaches 70% on aided recall once people see its logo.
What does that tell her? Most people know Daily Grind when they see it. That 70% aided figure isn’t bad at all. But the brand isn’t coming to mind naturally for most people, and it’s rarely anyone’s first thought.
So Daily Grind doesn’t have a “nobody has heard of us” problem. It has a “nobody thinks of us” problem. Those need different fixes. Simply getting the name in front of more people won’t do much. Priya is more likely to need frequent, distinctive advertising that links Daily Grind to the moments when people want coffee, so the brand comes to mind on its own.
Why Do These Metrics Matter?
Awareness doesn’t guarantee sales. But it’s usually a necessary first step. Nobody can choose a brand they don’t think of when they’re deciding.
This links to the idea of the evoked set, the small group of brands a consumer actually considers when making a purchase. When someone wants a coffee on the way to class, they won’t run through every café in town. They’ll think of two or three. If Daily Grind isn’t one of those, it never gets a chance, however good the coffee is.
That’s why recall is tracked at the awareness stage, the top of the purchase funnel, before consideration, preference and purchase. Weak recall there is an early warning sign.
How Is Recall Measured?
Recall is usually measured with market research surveys, through online panels, phone interviews or face-to-face interviews. For unaided and top-of-mind recall, researchers ask the open question first and record every brand mentioned, in order. Only after that do they show the list for aided recall. Why that order? If people saw the list first, it would jog their memory and inflate the unaided scores.
Many brands repeat the same survey every few months so they can see whether recall is moving. Some also watch how often their brand is mentioned on social media or searched for by name. That’s not a substitute for a proper survey, but it gives a rough signal in between.
Recall can also be measured for specific ads rather than the brand as a whole. We cover that in our article on advertising awareness and recall metrics.
What Are the Limitations?
Recall metrics are useful, but they don’t tell the whole story.
First, high recall doesn’t mean people like the brand. Plenty of brands are well known because of heavy advertising, yet people aren’t keen to buy from them. If Daily Grind became famous for slow service, its recall might go up while its sales went down.
Second, recall can be helped by things that have little to do with brand strength. A short, distinctive name is easier to remember than a long, generic one.
Third, these are survey results, so they carry the usual survey weaknesses: small samples, poorly worded questions, or someone happening to see a Daily Grind ad on the bus just before answering.
So Priya should read her recall figures alongside other measures, such as consideration, purchase intent, store visits and market share. Our overview of key marketing metrics shows where recall fits among them.
Bringing It Together
Top-of-mind, unaided and aided recall give us three ways to check how firmly a brand sits in a consumer’s memory, from a nod of recognition to being the very first name that comes to mind. For Daily Grind, the gap between a strong aided score and a weak top-of-mind score pointed Priya to exactly where her marketing work needed to go.
Sources
SurveyMonkey: Aided vs. Unaided Brand Awareness
Tracksuit: Share of Mind Metrics, Aided and Unaided Brand Awareness
